Mail-in programme
You are not in Florida. That is fine.
Local collection is a Tampa Bay service. Everywhere else, we send the freight to you and cover the cost of it, and the arrangement is otherwise identical.
01
How the shipping works.
You do not pay for any of it.
- We send prepaid labels for smaller collections, or arrange palletised freight collected from your loading door for larger ones.
- We cover the shipping cost. It is not advanced, not recouped later, and not deducted before your split.
- No packing standards to meet. Banker’s boxes are fine. Mixed media in one box is fine. Ex-library stamps, spine labels and security strips need no removal.
- Nothing comes back. Whatever will not sell online goes into our own monthly $1 sale or to recycling. You never receive a return shipment.
02
What to compare us against.
Mail-in is a crowded field. Ask all of us the same questions.
Once shipping is involved, every service in this category looks similar from the outside. These are the questions that actually separate them, and we would encourage you to put them to anyone you are considering, including us.
- What exactly is deducted before the split? Ours is the marketplace fee and the shipping of the item that sold. Labour, storage, software and fuel come out of our half, not off the top.
- What happens to what does not sell? Ours never returns to you and never becomes your disposal problem.
- Can you speak to a current partner? Ours will take the call. Three are described on the case studies page with confirmed payout figures.
- Is there a minimum, a fee, or a lock-in? None, none, and thirty days’ notice either way.
03
Why we do not offer cash up front.
A fair question, asked honestly.
Some services offer a flat sum per book paid immediately, instead of a share of what it sells for. It is a genuine convenience, and if guaranteed money today matters more to your board than total return, that is a reasonable choice to make.
We do not offer it, for one reason: a flat rate has to be priced low enough that the buyer wins on average. It is insurance, and you pay the premium out of the items that were worth the most. Look again at the notable sales — four single items returned $418 between them. Under a flat-rate model those four books pay a few dollars.
What we offer instead is speed and consistency: items listed promptly rather than sitting in a queue, payouts on a regular cycle with a statement showing what sold, and a partnership where the upside on an unusual item stays with you.
04
What travels well, and what does not.
Books of every kind, plus DVDs, music CDs, audiobooks on CD, cassette tapes and video games. Ex-library material goes as it is: stamps, spine labels, jacket covers, barcodes and security strips need no removal, and asking staff to strip them would defeat the point of the programme.
Condition is the only real limit, and it is the same one that applies locally. Water damage, mould and insect damage rule an item out, because on a pallet the risk is to everything around it rather than to that single item. If a box is borderline, send it and we will make the call at this end.
Do not sort first. It is the most common instinct and the most expensive one: the titles that carry genuine online value are frequently the plainest-looking things in the box, and a collection somebody has already picked through is worth less to both of us.
05
Getting started from out of state.
Tell us roughly what you have and where it is. We will tell you honestly whether the freight makes sense — and if it does not yet, we will say so rather than move boxes for the sake of it.
Think in pallets rather than boxes for freight to be worthwhile. If you are below that, it is usually better to hold material until after your next sale and talk to us then.